


Evergreen (The Deck The Halls Remix)

by leiascully



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Mistletoe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 22:37:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1566533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody ever asks the mistletoe's opinion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evergreen (The Deck The Halls Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esinde Nayrall (red_squared)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_squared/gifts).
  * Inspired by [In which James is besotted, Sirius is unsympathetic, Remus is devious, and Peter just wants to sleep](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1251601) by [Esinde Nayrall (red_squared)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_squared/pseuds/Esinde%20Nayrall). 



Aye, it's always the mistletoe they call on in their time of need. Always the mistletoe that's supposed to solve every problem. As if there weren't enough Christmas magic swirling around the place, there's got to be romance as well. And it can't be the common mistletoe that grows on the birches down in the village, oh no. Certainly not. They have to come romping and rambling into the forest, nevermind that it's the Forbidden Forest, because heaven knows there isn't any good reason that it's called that. Of course there wouldn't be anything slumbering darkly in someplace called the Forbidden Forest. What's in a name? A forest by any other word would be nearly as dangerous, as long as it were filled with wolves and bears and absolutely enormous spiders and things that don't even bear naming in case they hear you. Bloody children, trampling everything, traipsing about without a care in the world, skinning bark off trees with their stupid boots. Can't _accio_ me, I'll tell you that. I'm not some ordinary plant. 

At least there were only three of them this year. Some years they're more clever than others - it isn't every book in the library that talks about my lineage. There's no more ancient mistletoe than my patch. Sprouts of my ancestors brokered peace and killed gods, forged true love and cured the dying. You hear about mistletoe in a prophecy, and I'm the mistletoe you're looking for. Sliced from my branch with a silver dagger on the day of the winter solstice, there isn't much I can't do: love potions, poisons, panaceas, traps to catch anything you fancy. These three didn't look much like readers, but maybe they heard the lore somewhere. Or maybe one of their friends told them, one with enough sense to stay in the warm and not risk waking anything else in their search for a Christmas kiss. 

The tall one boosted the shorter one up the tree while the middling one taunted them both. Desperate-looking bunch, although for the little one, it might have been the dagger between his teeth. Hundreds of years and they never learn that a silver dagger goes into a sheath as well as anything else does. But he got up eventually, and snicker-snack, off I dropped, snatched untimely from the bosom of my patch. They never learn they need both hands for the tree; the little one tried to catch me and nearly fell out of the tree. The other two shouted at him and scrambled. I hoped I'd drop into the snow and sink out of sight, but they managed to catch me, and then it was back to the castle in somebody's pocket, among the sweet wrappers and the never-to-be-used just-in-case welly. Hope springs eternal in the youthful brain, what there is of it.

They never get the potion right the first time. Why would they? Teenagers playing with magic beyond their years, befuddled by rosy dreams of a future full of snogging - it's amazing they didn't blow up a whole wing of the castle. If I breathed, I would have choked on the fumes. Eventually they dumped the whole thing and started over. They made the tall one keep watch instead of muddling up the ingredients again; he kept skulking in and out of the room to peer into the cauldron. The little one had to snatch the spoon away from him to keep him from ruining everything. He said the tall one ought to trust him, as it was all for his benefit anyway, and the tall one went all drifty and dreamy again and mooched out of the room to peer down the corridor. Their friend the reader was much too sane to join them. That one will survive adolescence if any of them does.

I could tell as soon as the potion touched me that it was made with bits of the middling one instead. It tasted like him, all pepper and haughtiness and longing. Maybe it was a mistake by the little one. The tall one and the middling one both had dark hair - it would have been simple to mix one black lock with another, especially with the middling one and the tall one both shouting instructions at the little one, despite the fact that he seemed to know his way around the cauldron. There was barely enough potion on me to leave a gloss on my berries. I knew it wouldn't have much effect that way. Nobody asked me if it had gone right, although that's certainly the wisest option, and a much simpler spell than they were trying. Everyone wants the ancient power of the mistletoe; nobody ever thinks about the ancient wisdom of the mistletoe (which usually amounts to "Better not, mate", so perhaps that's why they didn't ask). 

They hung me up in the common room, and every time someone went by who had feelings and urges for the middling one, it was like a rattling breeze all through my leaves, and it happened rather too often for my taste. One can't expect dignity from teenagers, it seems, even teenage wizards. Even the bookish friend caused a stir when he walked under me - he at least might have known better, but he made my leaves shiver like a blizzard was blowing through the tower. And for all of that, not a single kiss. A lot of very confused stumbling and mid-course correction to stumble off the other way, but not one embrace. Even the bookish one just went and sat by his friend as if he weren't filled with longing.

The little one came back after a few days, in the relative peace of early morning - not many wizardlings up at that hour to fill the space with yearning. He took me down and rinsed me off and doused me in another dose of potion: this one much less peppery, sweeter, sadder, smelling of old paper and a hint of blood. The bookish friend with the storm of feelings - that was whose brownish hair was in the potion this time. I got coated three or four times, the little one conjuring up a gentle puff of wind to dry me each time, until my leaves were stiff and shiny. 

"You will work, won't you?" the little one whispered as he hung me up again. "I know you will." He gave my leaves a little caress and trotted back off to bed. 

There were fewer people interested in the bookish friend, although with so much potion on me, it was easier to pick up on. The middling one seemed disappointed that no one was paying him any more mind. The bookish one said something to him, and he tried to _accio_ me - they never do learn. The middling one grumbled and came over to take me down, but at soon as he stood under me, the blizzard blew through my leaves again, stronger than ever. 

"I don’t need you t—" the middling one said, and then stopped saying, as the blizzard must have blown through him as well.

"Don’t need me to what?" the bookish one asked, a smirk in his voice. "Help you get down the mistletoe that Wormtail must have switched over yesterday with one soaked in my ingredients?"

The bookish one stepped closer and closer to the middling one, until they were standing together, the scents of pepper and old paper mingling until the whole room must have reeked of it.

"Gnnh," said the middling one, his haughtiness gone dumb.

"Yes," said the bookish one, pressing up against the middling one until there wasn't a breath they didn't share. "That’s what I thought."

And then: the kiss, the kiss I made irresistible, the pinnacle of Christmas magic. A softly-spiced kiss, a hearth-warm kiss, a rosy-cheeked kiss. A kiss pricked with the fragile flowers of frost. A kiss full of moonlight on snow. A kiss to bring heat and joy to icy darkness. A kiss to bind two hearts together with glossy paper and silky ribbon. A kiss to make the world turn toward the spring. 

There's the magic of it. A kiss like that will see you through to summer. Mistletoe, after all, is evergreen.


End file.
